


Burned Fates

by SpellCasterLight



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Swearing, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29419731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCasterLight/pseuds/SpellCasterLight
Summary: Soulmates; what a load of rubbish. [Gaara x Tenten] Naruto AU Week - Day 7 Prompt: Soulmates
Relationships: Gaara/Tenten (Naruto)
Kudos: 6
Collections: Naruto AU Week 2021





	Burned Fates

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way shape or form. This story is purely for entertainment not profit.
> 
> Author's Notes: Another entry for Naruto AU Week day 7 Soulmate AU! My other soulmate entry is the happy one, this one? Not so much xD
> 
> Happy Valentines day everyone! =D
> 
> Pairing Warning: It also goes without saying but if [Gaara x Tenten] isn't your thing turn back now.
> 
> Warnings: Mild swearing. Major Character Death.
> 
> Naruto AU Week - Day 7 Prompt: Soulmates

Everyone was born with a band around their ring finger, and when you married your soulmate the band glowed a beautiful golden colour, the universes way of congratulating you on finding and marrying your soulmate.

On the other hand, if you and your soulmate didn't marry didn't find each other and declare your love, your ring finger would turn black, the universes way of punishing you.

Soulmates; what a load of crap.

Tenten had never heard, nor heard of anyone who had heard, of anyone finding their so-called soulmate. Of anyone's ring finger glowing gold _or_ turning black.

It was a legend, a myth, that was all. The band was probably just some sort of unneeded hunter/forager mark from a time long gone or something else that could be explained.

The soulmate lie was made even more abundantly clear to her when Neji died in the war.

Surely if anyone was going to be her soulmate it would have been him? But there she was with her unmarked finger.

But no, life went on, and Tenten thought no more of soulmates.

* * *

On the day of Naruto and Hinata's wedding, like the days leading up to it, she found herself in the company of the sand siblings.

"Gaara! Tenten!" Naruto suddenly yelled making the weapons mistress and the Kazekage look up from their conversation. "Come dance with us!"

"Is that what you call it?" The bun haired woman teased back. "Looks like you guys are having a seizure!"

"Yes friends!" Lee yelled then, doing a version of the robot that made her laugh. "Join us!"

"We should be good friends," she stood then and offered Gaara her left hand. "Come on! They won't leave us alone until we do!"

Gaara slipped his left hand into hers so she could lead them to the dance floor. She registered that he was incredibly warm from how hot her hand felt but as soon as the thought appeared it vanished.

Being the doting host, and the fact that he hadn't let go of her hand all evening, a fact she felt strangely calm about, Tenten agreed to walk the Kazekage back to his hotel after the wedding reception.

"Goodnight Gaara," she smiled at him, but it became one of confusion when he lifted her hand again after she had only just removed it from his grasp.

"Tenten," he started in that gravelly but comforting tone he had, that seemed to bring the warming heat of the Sunagakure desert into your very chest. "Me and my siblings leave for Sunagakure tomorrow but when we are next in Konohagakure," the sand user brought her hand up and seemed to want to place a kiss to the back of it from the way he lifted it towards his lips but lowered it at the last second to place his free hand over it instead." May I ask you to accompany me to dinner?"

She liked Gaara; he was handsome, smart, determined, honest, a fantastic shinobi and an even better friend; what harm could one little date be?

"I'd like that," her smile grew at his eyes lighting up in barely restrained joy at her answer. "Write to me when you get home?"

"I will."

She would bet money his handwriting was as beautiful as his aquamarine eyes.

* * *

She woke up three days later to someone setting her hand on fire, at least that's what it felt like, she screamed shaking her hand out.

"Friend Tenten!" Lee yelled when he barged his way through her bedroom sliding door, how he even knew she was injured she didn't know but was in too much pain to care. "Friend Tenten what's wrong?!"

"My-my hand! It-!"

As soon as the taijutsu user switched on the light she saw it.

Her entire left hand's ring finger was black, charred, burnt to a crisp, parts of her skin had simply fallen off and she could see parts of the bone, muscle, and tendons. She screamed louder.

* * *

"I have no explanation."

"What?" Tenten practically screamed at the blonde medical ninja. "How can you not-I don't-why won't it heal?"

Lee had first carried a dead weight Tenten to Sakura's house to get her finger healed, and the medical ninja, when she couldn't heal it immediately told him to take her to the hospital and get Tsunade.

The panic and confusion on the fifth Hokage's face when the weapon user's finger didn't respond to anything was palpable and made the bun haired woman's stomach turn even more than it already was.

"It's like I can't even feel it's there, it's like there's no nerves in it anymore."

"But it is there, I can feel it, I can move it."

Tenten flicked her ring finger about wildly; ignoring the fact that she shouldn't be able to do any of that given her finger looked like it belonged to a corpse long dead.

"Is;" she held her injured finger's hand to her chest then. "Is my finger _ever_ going to heal?"

Tsunade looked sad then and even without the verbal confirmation she gave straight after Tenten knew her finger would be the black, deformed, jagged, appendage it was now forever.

Later that day they received word the Kazekage had been assassinated, found dead in his home. As she held a crying Lee to her chest Tenten thought sarcastically if things could get any worse. Bad things came in threes, didn't they?

* * *

Anyone in Konohagakure who knew Gaara on a first name basis was allowed to attend the funeral, naturally that included herself and Lee.

It was when they got to Sunagakure, met up with Kankuro and Temari, and the fan user saw her finger and nearly fell over, pointing at her charred appendage with such fear and panic, like it was the ghost of her dead brother himself, Tenten started silently praying that all those soulmate stories were just that.

This was _not_ the next bad thing. Soulmates were _not_ real. Losing her soulmate was _not_ what had just happened. No; life couldn't possibly be that cruel.

When she actually saw Gaara, lying almost peacefully in his coffin, with his own blackened, disfigured ring finger; she let out a sob and a curse. The weapons mistress would have simply crumbled to the floor if Sakura and Lee didn't catch her.

Now, every time she saw her blackened finger, she would think of what could have been. What _should_ have been.

Dating. Love. Marriage. Maybe even children. Gaara would have made a good father.

She angrily swiped at the tear that escaped her eye then.

Soulmates; what a load of crap. Truthful, mess you around, heart-breaking, crap; and she now had to live with that.


End file.
